Yes, celebs and stars do matter!
Journalist Barkha Dutt and Richa Anirudh host similar talk shows that deal with causes, but if Aamir Khan’s Satyamev Jayate caught the nation’s attention, it has got to do more with his star status. When it comes to pausing for a cause, celebs do matter, says Youngistan in unison
The moment the clock struck 11 am on May 6, 2012, nearly 27 million viewers in India got hooked to television to watch ‘Satyamev Jayate’. Yes you read it right! The latest TAM data released by Star Plus says that the first episode of the show on female foeticide opened with an aggregate rating of 4.09 across the country. The show which dealt with female foeticide that week became the No 1 trend on microblogging site Twitter till Monday, more than 24 hours after its telecast the first week.
More than 64 nursing homes have been suspended in Bhopal and 1,00,000 people called Aamir Khan to
discuss the issue. It wasn’t just impact. It was IMPACT!!!!
Have we sat up to take notice of such issues only because a celebrity – a star – is out there talking to us?
‘We the people’ a show which is hosted by journalist Barkha Dutt on NDTV also works for the similar
causes as being shown on Amir Khan’s show. Zindagi Live on IBN 7 hosted by Richa Anirudh is also a
show about societal problems and development issues.
Yet, none of them received so much response. Soon after the second episode of Khan’s show,
Barkha Dutt displayed her indignation through her tweet, “Ofcourse @aamir_khan impact & influence way more than us; congrats to him. But disagree journos ignore such stories, having had them on WTP.”
The question here is - is our society so much into glamour, showbiz, celebrities and star status that
work done by politicians, journalists, parents, teachers and the Government goes completely unnoticed?
Mumbai-based Harish Iyer, a victim of child sexual abuse who featured on all the three talk shows -
Satyamev Jayate, We The People and Zindagi Live as well - says “When I was on Barkha's show Twitter was abuzz with activity. When I was in Richa's show, Facebook was buzzing with updates about me. I got mails after both the shows, but I received a whopping 6000 emails, and most of these by survivors of child sexual abuse. People started giving me their seats in local trains, people asked me to pose for photographs. And random strangers poured out their hearts to me about their darkest secret of their life.” He thinks Aamir gets in his celebrity factor to the show and the way the show is packaged also makes a lot of difference.
While Barkha and Richa are stalwarts in the industry when it comes to the same, Aamir is an actor who is in
a new domain. So they elicit different kind of responses. Brand Satyamev Jayate was more popular
than the ambassador Aamir Khan.
Talking about the show’s ‘x factor,’ Harish says, “The show democratised viewership by getting all star channels and DD to play it parallelly. So the mukhiya of your gaon and the NRI at New York and London
can watch it”. Taking it personally, he added “Let me give you a firsthand account - he is a deeply emotional
person and doesn’t really care about his overworking tear glands when he shoots. His eyes have more water
than Niagara Falls.”
Krushita Adiha, student, St. Francis College for Women, says, “Actors and stars have an aura that can
charm people. People get easily influenced by whatever they say. So the response to his talk show, his
movie Taare Zameen Par which dealt with dyslexia have all had a profound impact because of his star status more than anything else.”
Kanchan Devda, also from the same college, says, “We The People was in English and not many people in our country understand the language whereas Satyamev Jayate is in Hindi and other regional languages. It has a very wide reach. People relate to Aamir better than they connect with Barkha or Richa because of our obsession for movies and movie related news.”
Perhaps, the importance that these causes are receiving after Satyamev Jayate is different not because of the
celebrity factor but because of the democratised viewership element.
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